Resisting State IconoclasmAmong the Loma of Guinea

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Carolina Academic Press

Ritual Studies Monographs

Pamela J. Stewartand

Andrew Strathern

Series Editors

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Resisting State IconoclasmAmong the Loma of Guinea

Christian Kordt HøjbjergUniversity of Copenhagen

Carolina Academic Press

Durham, North Carolina

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Copyright © 2007Christian Kordt Højbjerg

All Rights Reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Højbjerg, Christian.Resisting state iconoclasm among the Loma of Guinea / by

Christian Højbjerg.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN-13: 978-1-59460-218-4 (alk. paper)

1. Toma (African people)--Rites and ceremonies. 2. Toma (African people)--Religion. 3. Toma (African people)--Politics and government. 4. Guinea--History. 5. Guinea--Social life and customs. I. Title.

DT543.45.T65H65 2007305.896'34--dc22

2007009116

Carolina Academic Press700 Kent Street

Durham, North Carolina 27701Tel: (919) 489-7486Fax: (919) 493-5668www.cap-press.com

Printed in the United States of America.

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For Anne-Sophie

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Contents

Illustrations xiSeries Editors’ Preface: Ritual, Secrecy, and Continuity xiii

Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew StrathernAcknowledgments xxv

Introduction 3Things Do Not Always Fall Apart 3Suppression of Tradition and Politicisation of Religion in the

Postcolony 6Religious Symbolism 15The Sale Ritual System 22Transmission of Tradition 24The Anthropology of Religious Ritual Continuity 30Loma Religious Continuity: A Composite Approach 36Ethical Considerations in the Study of Secrecy 38

Chapter 1 The One and the Many: Guinean Policies of Iconoclasm 43Antecedents of Iconoclasm and Revelation of Secrecy Among the

Loma 46Disclosing Local Communities and Creating National Unity 50The Demystification Campaign 57The Limits of Iconoclasm 63

Chapter 2 The Loma 69A People of the Hinterlands of Liberia and Guinea 69Living on the Margins 73Loma History 78Loma Social and Political Organisation 89A Changing World 98Loma Religion 100

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Loma Sacrifice 103Sacrificial Gifts 108

Chapter 3 The Art of Loma Masking 117Analytical Approach 117Mask Terminology 120Origin and Illusion 124Inversion and Allusion: The Use of Metaphorical Language 132Mask Appearance and Person-Divinity Relationships 136Mask Appearance and Periodical Rituals 139Mask Appearance as a Social Control Mechanism 144Mask Appearance as Public Entertainment and a Means of Relating

to Outsiders 147The Work of Masks 149

Chapter 4 Belief-Fixation: The Transmission and Acquisition ofReligious Knowledge 153

Inconsistent Representations of a Religious Concept 153Encounters with the Extraordinary 156Dreams (The Stuff Spirits are Made of) 160Cognitive Schemas and Causal Judgement 162Divination: The Role of Religious Experts in Belief-Fixation 164Cult Associations and the Transmission of Sale Knowledge and

Ritual Practice 167Creative Imagination and Reproductive Religious Imagination 172

Chapter 5 Ritual Speech in Sale Sacrifice 175Emergent Ritual Symbolism and Cult Organisation 175Loma Ritual Language 179The Sacrificial System 181The Sacrificial Scheme: Relational Aspects of Sale Sacrifice 184Ritual Contextualisation: Sale Sacrifice as Negotiation of Power and

Social Relationships 190Ritual Recontextualisation: Ancestor Categories and Objects of

Transmission 192Ritual Self-Referentiality 194

Chapter 6 Inner Iconoclasm 197The Immunity of Loma Religion to Political Suppression 197

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Modes of Thought 198The Distinctiveness of Ritual Knowledge 204Inner Iconoclasm 212Self-Reflexivity: The Acquisition and Development of Religious

Ideas 214Conceptual Reflexivity: Sacrifice and the Crossing of Conceptual

Boundaries 218Mask Fabrication 220Reflexivity and the Social Organisation of Knowledge: Secrecy

and Ritual Simulation 223Oppression, Reflexivity, and Belief 227

Chapter 7 Loma Male Initiation 231Prologue to an Understanding of Poro Politics 231Cult Distribution and the Sociopolitical Context of the Poro 233Pölögi 240Naming the Pölögi and Preparation of the Initiation Camp 243The Opening Ceremony 245Scenes from Inside the Belly of the Beast 247The ‘Bush-School’ 249The Coming-Out Ceremony 251Memory and Revelatory Knowledge 252A Cognitive Perspective on the Sociopolitical Dynamics of the Poro 255

Chapter 8 Democratisation, Violence and Secret Society Politics 257Secret Society Laws 257A Changing Political Context 260Civil War and the Politics of Tradition 262Masked Violence 266The Semantics of Violence 269A Recapitulation of Loma Masking Performance 273The Transformation of a Masking Tradition 276

Chapter 9 Identity Politics 279The Objectification of Culture 279Difference and Identity: The Symbolic Value of a Religious Category 283The Dual Logic of Loma Political Culture 286Presentist Accounts of the Poro as an Ethnic Marker 291The Revival of Tradition 294

CONTENTS ix

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Invented and Inherited Tradition 298The Sociopolitical Dynamics of the Poro 300

Chapter 10 Religious Reflexivity: Steps to an Epidemiology of Loma Religion 303

Determinants of Religious Resilience 303Modes of Reflexivity 306Culture and Cognition 309

Bibliography 313

Index 351

x CONTENTS

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Illustrations

Figure 1. The Loma and their neighbours in Guinea and Liberia p. 5

Figure 2. Ancestors’ grave (wazi) and zalaghai p. 105

Figure 3. Mountain sacrifice (gizevoyi) p. 111

Figure 4. Water sacrifice (zievoyi) p. 113

Figure 5. Angbaï mask performing accompanied by harp player p. 122

Figure 6. The bird mask onilégagi with an apprentice p. 123

Figure 7. The stilt mask laniboï p. 127

Figure 8. A facial and several angbaï miniature masks lined up for sacrifice p. 128

Figure 9. The girls’ mask digibai p. 142

Figure 10. The boys’ mask anibhélékoï p. 143

Figure 11. Divination (ashes) p. 165

Figure 12. The sacred grove (savei) entrance marked by ‘ten-heads’(umpougi) p. 246

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Ritual Studies MonographSeries Editors’ Preface forResisting State IconoclasmAmong the Loma of Guinea

Ritual, Secrecy, and Continuity

—Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern

The retention of “tradition” in the face of “change” is a long running dis-cussion in anthropology, especially in relation to the influence of new reli-gious practices and economic and political transformations. Christian KordtHøjbjerg’s Resisting State Iconoclasm is a valuable contribution to this forumas well as to the literature on the Anthropology of Religion in West Africa. Weare delighted to include the work in our Ritual Studies Monograph Series (1).

Publications from the South-West Pacific (also referred to as Melanesia) onsimilar topics to those raised by Dr. Højbjerg can be usefully compared in anumber of instances. In terms of religious change and alteration of “tradi-tional” ritual / religious practices our work in the Hagen, Pangia, and Dunaareas of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (see Stewart and Strathern 2002a;Strathern and Stewart 1999a, 2000a, 2000b, 2004a), as well as the work ofBashkow (2006), Biersack (1999), Clark (2000), Engelke and Tomlinson(2006),Gibbs (1994), Jacka (2001), Jebens (2005), Knauft (2002), Lattas(1998), Reithofer (2005), Robbins (2004), and others, can serve as an ethno-graphic set for comparative analysis with the African materials.

Significant ritual cycles centering on Female Spirits in the Hagen and Pan-gia areas of Papua New Guinea were introduced into the areas through trans-mission in which outside ritual experts brought the knowledge of the relatedpractices to the important leaders of the communities, who wished to hold per-

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formances to secure the establishment of economic and political ties as well asto invoke cosmological links with the Female Spirits in relation to the local eco-logical environment of the groups involved in the performances. The Amb Kor(Female Spirit) ritual cycle in Hagen was held to renew the fertility of the cos-mos and bring health to the community (Stewart and Strathern 1999; Strath-ern and Stewart 1998, 1999b, 2000c, 2003). Likewise, the Laiyeroa (FemaleSpirit) ritual cycle in Pangia formed a part of a set of indigenous practices deal-ing with fertility, health, and prosperity (see Stewart and Strathern 2002b;Strathern and Stewart 2000c). The influences of the Christian churches,Lutheran, Catholic, and Pentecostal, have brought new ritual practices intothese areas, dramatically transforming the previous ways of imagining the re-lationship of the people to their cosmos and their land (see Stewart and Strath-ern 2000a, 2001a, 2001b; Strathern and Stewart 1997, 2000a). In the Duna areaof Papua New Guinea we found that the Female Spirit (Payame Ima) remainsa vital, albeit transformed, aspect of the landscape, which is nowadays heavilyimbued with Christian ritual cycles and cosmological referents (Stewart 1998;Stewart and Strathern 2000b, 2002a). The Payame Ima has been invoked in is-sues to do with compensation payments from companies, e.g., mining con-cerns, in terms of environmental pollution and impact, since the Payame Imais said to protect the eco-system as well as the people living within it. ThePayame Ima is also remembered in expressive genres, such as the popular sungballads, pikono, of the Duna (Stewart and Strathern 2002c, 2005a) where sheis depicted as assisting young men in their heroic challenges against cannibalspirits and other feats. In the past she was also held to be the presiding entityover the bachelors’ growth houses (palena anda) where boys matured intoyoung men, learning practices such as how to decorate themselves and helptheir hair to grow and how to interact with their environment and cosmos ina “proper” manner (see Stewart and Strathern 2002a).

Ritual cycles held to honor male spirit beings were also a part of the com-plex of cosmologically directed activities in the past. In Hagen, the Kor Wöp(Male Spirit) ritual cycle expressed in the widest sense the regeneration of thepower of spring water, fertility, and health (Stewart and Strathern 2002d;Strathern and Stewart 2004b).

In our examples here we note the articulation of reactions to outside forcesby local populations in relation to ritual practices. All of these examples of rit-ual practices from our field areas in Papua New Guinea raise issues parallel tothose explored by Dr. Højbjerg. First, what is the meaning of secrecy? Secondhow have practices changed and how do people view these changes? And third,how are people’s memories of previous practices constituted? Dr. Højbjergdiscusses numerous theoretical and comparative approaches to such problems,

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from the cognitive to the sociological. He also provides an in-depth investi-gation into how secrecy actually operates among the Loma. He finds thatmany aspects of ritual knowledge are “personal possessions”, linked to bodilyexperiences and in that sense kept private. Secrets may also be transmittedonly gradually to apprentices over time. (Initiation grades everywhere practi-cally mandate such a circumstance: an extreme examples is given by FredrikBarth on the Baktaman people of Papua New Guinea, Barth 1975.) Some se-crets, Dr. Højbjerg, suggests, should be seen as “public secrets”, since they dif-ferentiate and segregate whole categories of people in terms of their supposedritual knowledge. He applies this point to gender relations. Women are ex-cluded from participation in many rituals; but, by the same token, their pres-ence “behind closed doors” was highly relevant to these occasions and con-tributed to their meanings in a gendered field of social relations.

Many parallels—as well as some contrasts—appear here when we com-pare these findings on the Loma with the Highlands Papua New Guinea con-texts. There, too, women were formally “excluded” from many ritual eventsin the sense that they were not permitted to take part in secluded areas fencedoff from public ceremonial grounds; this in spite of the fact that in numbersof cases the male participants in rituals directed their actions to putative Fe-male Spirit figures (see Strathern and Stewart 2004b). Indeed the Female Spiritin Mount Hagen was said to be jealous of and hostile to the men’s humanwives should they intrude on her domain and would turn their bodies thewrong way round if they did so. Ritual cosmology itself therefore explainedtheir “exclusion”. Yet women were positive participants in and beneficiaries ofthe rituals. They raised pigs and assisted in their slaughter for these occasions,and their own fertility was held to be enhanced by the rituals practiced. Themen acted as specialists on behalf of the whole community, according to thelogic employed here. And the knowledge of this was reflexively available to thepeople themselves, making everyone willing to put work and effort into thepreparations for the events (see Stewart and Strathern 1999). In the case ofthe Loma, Dr. Højbjerg also observes that the respectful silence of the womenand children in the face of Poro celebrations strongly contributed to the senseof the significance of the overall event. In other words, women were not just“excluded”; or, if they were, this was on the basis of their collaborative per-formance of respect for the occasion. We ourselves have previously made ar-guments of this kind central to our construction of the model of collabora-tion rather than gendered antagonism in the Hagen Female Spirit complex(see Stewart and Strathern 1999; 2002b).

Secrecy itself may be contextual and varying. And it may be destroyed, onlyto be reconstituted later. Among the Loma government iconoclastic forces had

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enforced the display of ritual paraphenalia considered secret in the early 1960s;yet these secrets were re-instituted in 1991. This historical reversal undoubt-edly was a product of Loma resistance and resilience, played out in dramaticperformance modes. We may compare, and contrast, this dramatic revival ofpractices with two phases of historical change in the Hagen area of Papua NewGuinea. Catholic and Lutheran missionaries, and their indigenous evangelistsalike, from the 1930s onward, discouraged people from holding their large-scale spirit performances. In the 1960s, however, a number of revivals of theseperformances took place, sponsored by local leaders who were keen both toextend their reputations in all of the historical domains of prestigeful activity,and also to reclaim control over aspects of fertility and prosperity which hadlain in abeyance during the initial time of the missionary prohibitions. Someleaders rationalized the revival in terms of an additive logic. As one leader, avery famous man of the Ulka tribe in the Nebilyer Valley, explained the mat-ter to Andrew Strathern in 1965, in his view the sacred stones and site of theKor Wöp (Male Spirit) enclosure had been laid down originally by God (Gote-nt etepa pinditim). Others recognized the conflict between the old religion andthe new and were concerned to mediate it. On one occasion, among the UkiniOyambo people in the far western corner of the Baiyer Valley, leaders them-selves first completed the appropriate rituals for the Female Spirit (Amb Kor)and then, in an apparent renunciation of ritual secrecy, displayed the hithertohidden stones emblematic of the Spirit on the high trestles (ropoklama) fromwhich pieces of pork steamed inside the enclosure were customarily distrib-uted onto the upturned spears of eager visitors. On other occasions, wherethe Christian presence was not so strong, leaders simply held the Christianopposition at bay for the duration of the ritual. One local performance tendedto stimulate another in a neighboring group, in a chain-like fashion reminis-cent of how chains of ceremonial exchange occasions known as moka emergedover short runs of time between allied groups (see, e.g. Strathern and Stew-art 2000a; Stewart and Strathern 2005b). In a given tribe (political unit) itsmember clans might perform the Amb Kor rituals int turn, none wishing tobe left out of the cycle designed ritually to ensure prosperity and fertility.Among one group, the Kawelka, by the time each clan or sub-clan had fin-ished the whole ritual sequence (which spanned in each case a number ofyears), Christian influence in the wider Hagen area had become so entrenchedthat it was unlikely the sequence would ever be repeated. Revival thus ran itshistorical course, ending when Christianity, especially its charismatic and Pen-tecostalist versions with their own promises of fertility and salvation, finallytook over. The state as such at no time intervened either to support or to de-nounce the “traditional” rituals. But the enshrinement, after 1975, in the Con-

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stitution of the Independent nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG), of the no-tion that PNG is a “Christian nation” certainly paved the way for the new re-ligion’s success.

In many cases, among the various groups, the power of sacred stones wasconsidered to have been destroyed by their exposure to the eyes of the pub-lic, including women. But the matter is not quite so clear cut. There weremany secret procedures that were not revealed, whose power could still beheld to have been emplaced in the earth and to be continuously at work. Inthe case of at least two Kawelka sub-groups, the sacred stones were buried inplaces shown only to eldest sons of the leaders, so their location to this daywould not be known to more than a few people. While the ritual practiceshave been overtly suspended, if not repudiated or superseded, not all secretshave been revealed. People’s memories of these earlier practices, then, arelikely to be a compound of historical displacement accompanied by an am-biguous sense of continuing presence. Such a presence is obviously much at-tenuated by comparison with the Loma situation analyzed by Dr. Højbjerg;but it shows how secrecy is a matter of degree and context and lends itself tohistorical variability and ambiguity. In Papua New Guinea generally, the as-sault on indigenous ritual was certainly mounted at least in part in the nameof the ideology of “ modernity”, with which Christianity was also associated,but there was no revolutionary state iconoclasm. Indeed PNG’s first leadersof the nation after Independence were keen supporters of indigenous cultureand some remain so today, combining adherence to “tradition” with alle-giance also to one or another Christian denomination. Perhaps we shouldnote here that in PNG at these times there has been no element of Islamiciconoclasm led by reformist prophets such as Dr. Højbjerg reports among theLoma. Nor was there any sense in PNG that the promotion of local solidar-ity precluded or impeded the growth of national consciousness. “Tradition”,actually, has been co-opted into the cause of “modernity” as often as it hasbeen excluded from it; all depending on the political convenience of the day.Tradition thus becomes a strategic resource, to be deployed at will. In thisway it is like secrecy. As Dr. Højbjerg points out for the Loma, partial reve-lation goes along with secrecy. Revelation points to secrecy, and vice-versa.In PNG, published versions of rituals may contribute to this process; andpoliticians’ use of such knowledge or their allusion to it may help to enhancetheir own prestige or power over others. PNG leaders may well encourage re-search workers to make certain practices known, while also promising not toreveal others. Andrew Strathern was once encouraged to give a tape-record-ing of chants performed for the Amb Kor to the local radio station so thatpeople in the wider area would know the performing group had conducted

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the ritual. These chants, unlike the spells and acts performed and witnessedonly by the immediate participants, are heard widely beyond the sacred en-closures in which the ritual takes place, and this is an important part of theritual performance itself.

Dr. Højbjerg’s overall purpose is to rehabilitate the idea of continuity out-side of imputations of “Orientalism”. In this he succeeds admirably. Indeed,it is time overall to reject the fictional dichotomization of “tradition” and“modernity”, since these elements of social life and ideology intertwine andcoexist (for a review of issues see Strathern and Stewart 2004a and see alsoStrathern and Stewart 2000d). One of the prime reasons for this situation isalso fundamental in theoretical terms: the play of imagination as a powerfulforce in many social and cultural activities (see for example Stewart andStrathern 2004a; Strathern and Stewart 2005a, 2005b, 2006a, 2006b). Imagi-nation creatively comes into play in other arenas such as in the new uses ofperformative elements as a part of “cultural revival movements”. We havenoted this in our work over the years in Taiwan (see for example Stewart andStrathern 2005c; and Strathern and Stewart 2005c) as well as in Ireland amongthe Ulster-Scots (see for example Strathern and Stewart 2005d). Many of theseelements are transferred from prior ritual contexts and placed into new oneswhere they both retain elements of previous meaning and create new mean-ings in altered political and social environments. “Cultural revival movements”are dependent on specific forms of indigenous knowledge which is importantin a variety of applications (see for example Stewart and Strathern 2004b).

Christian Højbjerg’s study of the social and historical dynamics of secrecy,resistance, and continuity among the Loma, who span an area between Guineaand Liberia, takes its place among a generation of interpretive case studies onAfrican contexts of life which bring together analysis of politics and econom-ics with an understanding of culture and history. A parallel to Dr. Højbjerg’swork can be found in that of Mariane Ferme on the Mende of Sierra Leone tothe west of the Loma (Ferme 2001; see also the earlier work of Kenneth Little1951). The Poro and Sande secret societies are transnational phenomena inthis part of Africa, and among the Mende, as with the Loma, they depend notjust on secrecy, but on its performance in social contexts, with multiple playson hidden linguistic meanings and the ambiguities of ritual displays of masks.Ferme notes for example (2001: 161, citing Simmel 1950) that secrecy andpower “are both predicated on the relationship between the subject’s concealedaims and their visible manifestations in the external world”. The same appliesto the Loma, with the added force that attacks on these secret societies amongthem have served, rather than obliterating them, to increase the layerings ofambiguity and secrecy that surround them and lend to them more power. Dr.

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Højbjerg’s in-depth study makes a fresh and distinguished contribution to thisand many other themes in contemporary anthropological theory and analy-sis, while solidly grounding itself in ethnographic exposition.

November 2006Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Endnotes

(1) Other titles in the Ritual Studies Monograph Series include:2001. Valeri, Valerio, edited by Janet Hoskins. Fragments from the Forest and

Libraries (essays by Valerio Valeri) edited by Janet Hoskins. Durham,NC: Carolina Academic Press.

2002. Goody, Jack and S.W.D.K. Gandah. The Third Bagre: A MythRevisited. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

2005. Stewart, Pamela J. and Andrew Strathern (eds.). Contesting Rituals:Islam and Practices of Identity-Making. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Acade-mic Press.

2006. Pedersen, Lene. Ritual and World Change in a Balinese Princedom.Duraham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press.

2006. McAllister, Patrick. Xhosa Beer Drinking Rituals: Power, Practice andPerformance in the South African Rural Periphery. Durham, N.C.: Car-olina Academic Press.

2007. Stewart, Pamela and Andrew Strathern (eds.). Asian Ritual Systems:Syncretisms and Ruptures. Forthcoming, Durham, N.C.: Carolina Acad-emic Press.

2007. Bamford, Sandra (ed.). Embodying Modernity and Post-Modernity:Ritual, Praxis, and Social Change in Melanesia. Durham, N.C: CarolinaAcademic Press.

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Clark, Jeffrey 2000. Steel to Stone. A Chronicle of Colonialism in the SouthernHighlands of PNG. Edited by Chris Ballard and Michael Nihill. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Engelke, Matthew and Matt Tomlinson (eds.) 2006. The Limits of Meaning.Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity. New York and Oxford:Berghahn.

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Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 1998. Embodiment and Commu-nication: Two Frames for the Analysis of Ritual. Social Anthropology(Journal of the European Association of Social Anthropologists) 6(2):237–251.

Strathern Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 1999a. Collaborations and Conflicts.A Leader Through Time. Fort Worth Texas: Harcourt Brace College Pub-lishers.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 1999b. “The Spirit is Coming!” APhotographic-Textual Exposition of the Female Spirit Cult Performancein Mt. Hagen. Ritual Studies Monograph Series, Monograph No. 1.Pittsburgh.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2000a. Arrow Talk: Transaction,Transition, and Contradiction in New Guinea Highlands History. Kent,Ohio and London: Kent State University Press.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2000b. Stories, Strength & Self-Narration. Western Highlands, Papua New Guinea. Adelaide, Australia:Crawford House Publishing.

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Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2000c. The Python’s Back: Path-ways of Comparison between Indonesia and Melanesia. (2000) Westport,Conn. and London: Bergin and Garvey, Greenwood Publishing Group.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart-Strathern 2000d. Custom, Moder-nity and Contradiction: Local and National Identities in Papua NewGuinea. The New Pacific Review Vol. 1, Number 1, Dec. 2000, pp.118–126.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2003. Divisions of Power: Ritualsin Time and Space among the Hagen and Duna Peoples, Papua NewGuinea. Taiwan Journal of Anthropology 1(1): 51–76.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2004a. Empowering the Past, Con-fronting the Future, The Duna People of Papua New Guinea. For, Con-temporary Anthropology of Religion Series, New York: PalgraveMacmillan.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2004b. Cults, Closures, Collabora-tions. In, Women as Unseen Characters. Male Ritual in Papua NewGuinea, for Social Anthropology in Oceania Monograph Series, editedby Pascale Bonnemere, pp. 120–138. Philadelphia, PA: University ofPennsylvania Press.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2005a. Violence: ConceptualThemes and the Evaluation of Actions, In, Special Issue, The Meaningsof Violence and the Violence of Meanings, Polylog 5 (2004) (electronicjournal) at http://them.polylog.org/5/fess-en.thm

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2005b. Witchcraft, Sorcery, Ru-mors , and Gossip: Terror and the Imagination—A State of Lethal Play.The Central States Anthropological Society Bulletin 40.1: 8–14.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2005c. Introduction. In, Expres-sive Genres and Historical Change: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea andTaiwan , edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, pp. 1–39.For, Anthropology and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-PacificSeries, London, U.K. and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2005d. “The Ulster-Scots”: ACross-Border and Trans-National Concept and Its Ritual Performance.Journal of Ritual Studies 19.2: 1–16.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2006a. Introduction: Terror, theImagination, and Cosmology. In, Terror and Violence: Imagination andthe Unimaginable, edited by Andrew Strathern, Pamela J. Stewart, andNeil L. Whitehead, pp. 1–39. For, Anthropology, Culture, and SocietySeries, London and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press.

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Strathern, Andrew and Pamela J. Stewart 2006b. “Witchcraft and Rumor: Asynthetic Approach” Keynote presentation in Annual Ethnological Soci-ety meeting at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Tai-wan, 26 June 2005. Newsletter of Taiwanese Anthropology and Ethnology39:3–34.

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Acknowledgments

For research support, I would like to thank the Danish Research Councilfor the Humanities, the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, the DanishCouncil for Development Research, and the former Danish Institute for Ad-vanced Studies in the Humanities. Holger B. Hansen, the former head of theCentre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen, generously made work-ing facilities available at a difficult time when I did not benefit from any in-stitutional academic affiliation.

I began my field research in southeast Guinea in 1990-1 and returned againin 1993 as a consultant on a local development project. From 1993-5 I livedintermittently in the town of Macenta and managed to carry out ethnographicfieldwork parallel to my official function as development ‘sociologist’. In 1998and 1999 I returned twice for periods of three months to study issues relatedto the natural environment and ended up learning more about settlement his-tory and ethnic relationships in a politically tense climate. There is only littlereport in this book on findings from my most recent visits to the border areabetween Liberia and Guinea in 2005 and 2006. I thank the Guinean authori-ties for granting me the permission to carry out fieldwork and archival stud-ies in Guinea and colleagues at the history department, University of Conakry,for facilitating my research. On a number of occasions the personnel at Mis-sion Philafricaine in Macenta have cured me of malaria. My family and I aremost grateful for their generous help and hospitality.

I first got the idea to this book in 1995. Obviously, many colleagues, friendsand family members have never really understood why a book can be in themaking for so long. Apart from the fact that the present study of Loma reli-gious and political life builds on data gathered during more than a decade, thebook would probably have been even more difficult and time-consuming towrite had I not benefited from the encouragement of a number of colleagues.I thank Michel Izard for suggesting back in 1989 a region in West Africa anda topic of which little knowledge existed. Over an unforgettable Guinean-stylerice and fish lunch served in her home, the late Denise Paulme sustained the

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relevance of my choice of field and topic. I would also like to thank MichelCartry who taught me a lot about rituals and introduced me to the researchunit Systèmes de pensée en Afrique noire at CNRS where I first presented partsof the ethnography included in this book. I am grateful to Kirsten Hastrup,who directed my initial work among the West African Loma and their neigh-bours. A non-regional specialist, she has always pushed me to consider myethnographic findings in the light of current anthropological themes and the-ory. Comments on parts of the book by a number of colleagues have beenmost valuable and helped me endure the task of writing the entire book. Inparticular, I would like to thank Brian Patrick McGuire, Georg Ulrich, Har-vey Whitehouse, James Fairhead, John Peel, Jonathan Schwartz, Martin Gaen-szle, Michael Houseman, Michael Jackson, Niels Kastfelt, Ramon Sarro, TimGeysbeek, the members of the Copenhagen Culture and Cognition Circle, theanonymous reviewers of previously published material, and my father-in-lawPeter Helger. I am most grateful to Michael Harbsmeier for having taken thetime to read the entire manuscript and encouraging me to publish it. The se-ries editors Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern also provided me withvaluable comments on the complete manuscript. I thank them for their deci-sion to publish it. Many thanks also to Reuben Ayres for his careful editing ofmy book. The SAXO-Institute, University of Copenhagen, generously pro-vided the means for a final proof-reading of the manuscript. Finally, I wouldlike to thank for permission to use previously published material from thejournals Africa, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Social An-thropology, and from edited books published by AltaMira Press, Aarhus Uni-versity Press, Hurst and Co.

Unfortunately, I am unable to mention the name of people who have aidedmy research over the years in the region of Macenta, southeast Guinea. I havealways been received with generosity by my hosts in many different settlementsthroughout the region. However, without the friendship and unconditionalassistance of a few Loma and Manya who I know well, I would not have hadmuch new information and insight to add to the existing sub-regional histor-ical and anthropological literature about ritual and the politics of so-called se-cret societies.

My wife Anne-Sophie Helger joined me for a short period of fieldwork in1990-1 and again in 1995. Much to my embarrassment she managed to pickup local language at an amazing speed. Fortunately, she also took some of thebest photographs we possess of Loma masquerade and everyday life. Despiteseveral long periods of separation she has always sustained my ethnographicresearch in Guinea and Liberia. I dedicate this book to her.

xxvi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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